TGN-1412 and BIA-2474 Trials with Tragic End: Lessons Learnt To Make Clinical Trials Safer

Globally, there have been tremendous efforts by regulatory authorities to make clinical trials safer by making stringent clinical trial regulations. Despite this, we witnessed several tragic events. TGN1412 and BIA 10-2474 phase I trials are infamous trails in which healthy volunteers either succumbed to severe adverse effects or faced irreversible impairments of the test drug. Such afflictions in clinical trials are not only turbulent to the image of pharmaceutical industry but it also conveys dispiriting message for clinical trial participants.

To make clinical trials safer for participants, some regulatory changes are warranted.

Some stipulated measures to improve safety of clinical trial participants include inclusion of patients instead of healthy volunteers in phase I clinical trials, all compounds which are used for first time in humans should be considered as high risk compounds, amendments in first in human clinical trial design to N of 1 randomized control trial in place of 6+2 design with the sequential dosing of subjects both within and between cohorts and the individual patient pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data should be used to calculate sequential dosing. Besides these, there should be appropriate process for systematic risk assessment involving the use of statistical techniques to select pertinent risk factors with high predictive values of studies or sites that may be procumbent to non-compliance.

Inclusion of above mentioned measures in clinical trials are bound to make them safer and may help in pacifying the insecurity that has emerged among humans to participate in clinical trials.